End of Small Sanctuary
by ooliblikas
Summary: Honestly, if I weren't her only biological child, I think she would've buried me in the garden too. AkuRoku with some other pairings.


_I don't own shit. Enjoy. _

* * *

I'm laying on the kitchen table. Kitchen utensils are strewn about me and the sound of running water splashing against the surface of a ceramic bowl fills my ears somewhere from my left. The only thing I can see though, is the ceiling fan above me. It spins with a crooked limp and doesn't offer any comfort for the fever I'm experiencing. My vision keeps blurring and sometimes the gold and brown colouring of the fan melt together in mud. Other times, everything just goes black. All of my effort is placed on watching the ceiling fan and breathing.

"Momma, he needs to go to the hospital!"

The voice of my sister, Rei, seems miles away from me. I want to move my arm towards her, to judge the distance, or maybe to make a futile attempt to ask for help, I'm not really sure which. In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter because at this moment I think even a flinch of a finger is an impossible task. I'm far too exhausted to move and it's at this moment that I think that I'm actually going to die. I think that at fifteen, I should be terrified of death, but I can't think of a sweeter conclusion to the agony I'm experiencing. My only fear is that my mother's vision of God will be right.

"Shut your mother, child. He's going to be fine. Just do as you're told and bring me my sewing kit."

The voice of my mother is shrill and cruel. The pain is the only thing that stops me from cowering at the sound of it. She says that I'm going to be fine, but I have my doubts. There's a bullet lodged in my torso and it's been there for weeks now. And while I don't even know what a hospital looks like, I know that I should be there. My mother doesn't believe in hospitals and thus the wound went untreated and gradually became infected. The skin around the wound is swollen and tender, puss occasionally gushes out and my skin is an unrecognisable rainbow of colours The sight of it had been enough to make me physically ill, which was probably the only reason my mother even acknowledged it when she did.

All of this because my older sister, Aurora, had threatened to call the police. No one had ever dared to threaten my mother before and I didn't think any of us would ever try again. It wasn't a surprise that my mother lost it, but I think it was a series of recent events that had caused her to use a gun. Then again, looking back at it, maybe it wasn't that much of a surprise. Still, I had tried to put an end to their fight. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to stop her. She shot my sister between the eye's, a surprisingly good shot for a woman with an unsteady hand. Then, without a flinch, she turned the gun on to me. Honestly, if I weren't her only biological child, I think she would've buried me in the garden too.

My thoughts are disrupted by the excruciating pain that overcomes me when my mother attempts to fish out the bullet. The thought of her dirt encrusted nails and filth covered hands digging into my already infected wound makes me queasy. In general, kitchen-surgery isn't exactly my forte, but it's not like anyone would dare go against my mother. So instead I have to pretend that this is a completely normal family activity so that I can hold onto whatever sanity I have left.

Soon though, I'm overcome with nausea again. The fever that has kept me up for days has crawled its way back in and everything feels heavy. I'm exhausted, weak, and fading fast. I want nothing more than to scream for her to stop, but my entire being aches and desires to give up. Things go black for a few moments, and when I open my eyes again it occurs to me that my mother is now trying to use her sewing kit to close up the wound. My skin is now covered in a thin layer of perspiration and my breathing is ragged and shallow to my ears. It's at this moment that it dawns on me that my mother never had the intention of saving me. I think she was just trying to remove the evidence of her crime.

Then, there's a loud crash somewhere in the distance. The sound of wood cracking and splitting is followed by heavy foot-steps and shouting that I can't properly decipher in my fever induced state. Along with this, I can hear screaming and other loud noises from various occupants of the house. Eventually the heavy foot-steps find their way to the kitchen and it occurs to me that someone did call the police, and for the first time in years, I feel an unfamiliar sting of tears pool at the corner of my eyes before everything goes black.

* * *

The next time I wake up, I'm on a hospital bed. I look at the tubes and wires that are crowding my personal and overall making me uncomfortable. Everything about the room is strange and foreign, but not in the normal sense of an unfamiliar surrounding. I am literally unfamiliar with almost all of the electronics in the room. I don't understand the purpose of the wires attached to me and I'm torn between pulling some of them off me, but I don't. Before I can further asses my situation, a young woman walks into the room.

"It's good to see that you're awake, Roxas."

Her voice is gentle and delicate, a stark contrast to her sombre business suit. She sits next to me, takes out a clip board, and begins jotting something down. Like any human, I want to ask what she's writing, but I wasn't raised to ask questions so I keep quiet. Instead I try to put on a smile, but it's not working. Everything is foreign and all I can think about are my siblings and whether or not they're safe.

"Roxas, you were admitted to the hospital two days ago with a serious infection resulting from an untreated bullet wound. Upon further evaluation, it was discovered that you have several other lacerations and bruises. Your mother is currently in police custody. Your siblings are safe and receiving proper care. Roxas, what exactly happened in that house?"

It's a simple question, but that doesn't stop the onslaught of multiple memories from my childhood. Just what _had_ happened in the house? Still, I don't really know what she wants to hear from me, so I stay quiet for awhile more and try to make sense of everything. When I can't come up with an explanation or summary, I smile politely, "My mother is a good woman. I don't have anything else to say."

I watch her write and study the peculiar way her eyebrows knit together in hard concentration. Aside from that quirk, her facial expression is unreadable and I'm relieved by this. She eventually gives me a strange, almost melancholy, smile and then dismisses herself. In an odd way, I feel guilty. I wonder if this woman I know nothing about is disappointed in me. The thought haunts me as I watch her walk out of the room.

I remain in the hospital for days and watch helplessly as my life comes unravelled at the seams. I later learn that the woman in the suit is a social worker, but she's not the only person who prods me with questions. Police officers, doctors, nurses, and the like are constantly flooding in and out of this small room. They're always asking questions, but I rarely have the answers. It gets tiring, so I stop speaking altogether. Still, my silence doesn't mean much as it becomes apparent that my siblings are speaking more fluently than I. At first, the thought angers me because I feel that we're betraying our mother, but even that anger becomes exhausting. While I knew my childhood wasn't normal, it was still frightening and difficult to be told so blatantly that everything I knew to be normal, was wrong.


End file.
